Joshua Girling Fitch

Who was Joshua Girling Fitch?

Sir Joshua Girling Fitch was an English educationist, second son of Thomas Fitch, of a Colchester family, was born in Southwark, London.

His parents were poor but intellectually inclined, and at an early age Fitch started work as an assistant master in the British and Foreign School Society's elementary school in the Borough Road, founded by Thomas Lancaster. But he continued to educate himself by assiduous reading and attending classes at University College London; he was made headmaster of another school at Kingsland; and in 1850 he took his BA degree at the University of London, proceeding MA two years later.

In 1852 he was appointed by the British and Foreign School Society to a tutorship at their Training College in the Borough Road, soon becoming vice-principal and in 1856 principal. He had previously done some occasional teaching there, and he was thoroughly imbued with the Lancasterian system. In 1863 he was appointed a government inspector of schools for the York district, from which, after intervals in which he was detached for work as an assistant commissioner on the School's Inquiry Commission, as special commissioner, and as an assistant commissioner under the Endowed Schools Act, he was transferred in 1877 to East Lambeth. In 1883 he was made a chief inspector, to superintend the eastern counties, and in 1885 chief inspector of training colleges, a post he held until he retired in 1894.